Apparently Microsoft has released a program called Songsmith, which helps write songs by creating music to match a recorded voice. You can check it out and download it here.
Anyway, this thread isn’t about the software itself, but about a hilarious commercial that the Microsoft people have come out with. The Consumerist blog featured it this morning.
Nope. Not funny at all.
I want those four minutes and seventeen seconds of my life back. Do you work for Microsoft?
Well, i was going for a “train-wreck awful” definition of hilarious. Each to his own, i guess. I mean, come on; how can something that horrible NOT be funny?
It’s remarkable how that commercial makes me want to punch every single person who appears in it in the face. Repeatedly.
Yeah, I’ll bet he did.
Now that’s funny.
Wow. That was… something else. I’m trying to put my finger on the exact kind of suckitude… I’m going to go with: 80s after-school PSA.
My favorite part was the guy saying: “Oh, it’s Microsoft, so it’s easy to use, right?”
BWAAHAHAHAAHHAAAAHAA!!! 
More amusing (to some degree) is what happens when you try it out on David Lee Roth:
I do. It’s roundly laughed at internally. The only thing that would’ve saved it would be if it ended at 1:37.
Kinda funny: a certain co-worker has a somewhat irrational hatred for it. Being supportive, we managed to change most of the program sounds on his laptop to “♪ I’m singing with my laptop ♫”
Perfect expression for the commercial at 3:14!
Now there’s a new game. Record a classic song on Songsmith see what it comes up with. They could sell millions with it. The new Karaoke!
They have a lot of damn gall showing that stinking heap of parrot droppings running on a Mac!
You know, it reminds me of any old advertising truism:
"If you don’t have anything intelligent to say…
…sing it."
It’s an interesting idea. I think the application needs to get worked out, but down the road, it could be fun.
What are the legal implications for using a song created on Songsmith?
Hmm, a poorly implemented rip-off of GarargeBand…
yep, that’s microsoft for you, taking a better concept originating somewhere else, crap-ifying it, claiming they “invented” it and calling it “innovative”, how predictable
and yes, the “actors” were bad, Manos-level bad…
No. That can’t be a real ad. Can it?
I guess it helps if you’re singing in key in 4/4 rhythm with a standard harmonic progression. I think most people are going to get a weird tango on the Mixolydian scale in 7/8 time.
Another message board I frequent has been commenting both on this spot and Songsmith itself- apparently, the people in the ad are Microsoft employees and they intentionally went for a cheesy feel. My spontaneously-written-and-sung tribute to William Howard Taft and Carl Panzram (the latter of whom I had never heard of before writing the song) has gotten a lot of good comments.
I can’t wait for the inevitable all hands meetings with clever songs.
I kept waiting for the funny bit where Cthulhu goes stomping back down the basement stairs, with a chirpy family member secured in each tentacle, singing the Old Ones’ Jingle of Death. It didn’t happen, mhendo. 
Justifiable homocide.
Does the program ever actually do anything, or does it just play that one midi under whatever you say? And why would anyone ever pay money for that program? I would have trouble justifying twigs and pine-cones.